In the face of international competition, the future of many traditional fields of industry in Finland lies in specialised products. The textile manufacturer Reima-Tutta Oy is developing a new business area from smart clothes. A prototype of an arctic smart overall, Cyberia, shot the company to the global top overnight.
"The devices built into the prototype include a user interface that can be used while wearing gloves, devices that monitor vital functions, GPS and GSM technology, electric storage heating and various tools. The purpose was to gather an idea bank for the future", explains Akseli Reho, Director of the Reima-Tutta Research Center for Wearable Technology.
Cyberia was developed in a cooperation project that combined the resources of Reima-Tutta, the Institute of Electronics and the Institute of Fibre Materials Science at TUT, the University of Lapland, Nokia, Polar-Elektro and Suunto.
"We were looking for a university partner that would offer research input that we were unable to provide ourselves. TUT’s Institute of Electronics possesses a globally high level of expertise in user interfaces, electricity consumption and small and enduring electronics. Jukka Vanhala’s Personal Electronics Research Group comprises highly skilled people who also produce results", says Reho.
The Cyberia project benefited the university partner, too. According to Professor Vanhala, the accumulated expertise can be applied to other fields that study the introduction of electronics to novel applications. In addition, a strong network of Finnish experts in the field was created during the course of the project.
The cooperation between Reima and TUT continues in several projects related to smart clothing. As a new partner, the Optoelectronics Research Centre ORC has joined the team.
"In the Cyberia project, we wanted to find out what kind of things can be done. Now we are looking into how these things could be implemented in practice. At the Institute of Electronics, the research objects include power consumption, data transfer within clothing and the improvement of user heat comfort", says Vanhala.